Circus Workshops - Learning to Juggle

Circus Workshops and circus skills for schools, management training, team building, and corporate fun days, fetes and carnivals.

Learning to juggle and circus workshops are the perfect tool for teaching people to believe they can do the impossible... It's also a lot of fun and great having circus workshops at a party. How ever old you are.

...It seems only fair considering that most jobs these days expect us to do the impossible at least six times before lunch...that we should get a little training.

...and that it should be fun.

The benefits of circus workshops are so numerous we've created an extra page just to list them all.

Learning to do the impossible is of course, not easy. Some might go as far as to say that performing impossible feats is actually quite hard.

That's where we come in. As people who defy gravity on a daily basis, We can pass on the experience of having taught literally thousands the easy ways to do impossible things.

Our experience ranges from working with the BBC as part of their 'Surprise Yourself' event, teaching workshops at circus festivals, teaching in schools and for children's organisations. Teaching teachers (yes they do behave worse than the children). Teaching groups of accountants (the collective noun for accountants is actually a 'circus of accountants' due to the amount of juggling involved), as well as numerous company away days, and management training programs.

"I love the look in people's eyes when they suddenly realise they can, and are juggling. They usually drop a fraction of a second afterwards because they're so shocked they're actually doing it. Half the trick is getting over the shock that you're capable of doing these things."

The Circus Skills we Like to Teach

We can teach how to juggle balls, and juggling clubs. How to spin plates and dabble with diabalos. How to get a little bit devilish with devil sticks, or to play with poi. How to slide a crystal ball round your hands like David Bowie in labyrinth (contact juggling)... or for that matter, how to balance a chair on your chin.

Since first writing this, the list of circus skill equipment has expanded to include, balance beams, chinese ribbons, stilts, pedal-gos, unicycles, and balancing feathers, and we're always looking to expand the range of what is offered. The most recent addition, is some very wonderful profession quality hula hoops. If there's anything you specifically would like to learn, let us know, and we'll see if we can help, or put you in touch with someone else who can.

We have CRB clearance and Public Liability Insurance for all our circus workshops. please contact us.

The Serious Bits

• When working with children we do require that at least one other adult is present at all times to deal with anything serious that might prevent us all from having lots of fun.
• You should also ensure that there's somewhere we can play if it's wet, as we require paying even if it rains.

Circus Workshop Questions and Answers

1. Do you do circus workshops for children/adults/OAP/Special Needs?
2. What's the youngest children you can cater for?
3. How many people can you have in a circus workshop?
4. How long are your circus workshops?
5. What format do your circus workshops take?
6. I've other questions - how can I contact you?

Do you do circus workshops for children/adults/OAP/Special Needs

Yes. We can happily work with all the above. If you've got a specific group that you want to know if we can help with, contact us, and we'll see what we can do.

What's the youngest children you can cater for?

We have a guideline that we don't do parties for children under seven, because they generally require a little too much individual attention. For small groups, we may make exceptions. The youngest person I've ever taught to diabolo was three. In a mixed group there is no problem with younger people being around as long as there are responsible adults to look after them.

How many people can you have in a circus workshop?

As a guideline, we say that twenty people is about right for one instructor. If there are more, it means that people don't get as much one to one help, but it's not generally a problem.

We can of course, provide more instructors.

There are also different styles of workshop that are better suited for different amounts of people, so contact us, and we'll see what we can do to help. If dealing with larger numbers of children, if you have volunteers who can assist, that does cut the number of workshop leaders we need.

How long are your workshops?

The shortest we've done was one hour, and the longest was five days. Normally workshops run from a few hours to an afternoon.

What format do your circus workshops take?

Some people like to have formal lessons, where everyone has a go at the same thing at the same time, and the tutor gives formal instructions. This can be good for school type situations or for teamwork exercises where everyone can help everyone else learn as they learn.

Some situation lend themselves towards a more informal structure, or what are often called 'drop in sessions' where the equipment is made available, and people are allowed to try it out as and how they wish. The tutor will generally be on hand if there are any questions, or if people require demonstrations of how to use things. This tends to lend itself more to fetes and parties, where not everyone is going to be around for the whole workshop.

You can of course run a combination of the two, where people are given some instruction on all circus skills at the start, and then allowed free reign.

We'll more than happily advise you what circus skills and format will fit best with your event.

If there's anything else you want to know about circus skills and circus workshops, please contact us for more information